EQ Never

LadyVex_sl said:

Right. I agree with this.

I also don't understand why people want "nuances" and "annoyances" and "frustrations" in a game. I don't go down to the god damn pizza story unless it's worth my time, but people are willing to PAY to be annoyed? That's such a confusing concept to me.

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Maybe because modern games have you spoiled thinking its all about you? Sometimes, you have to look up and realize that the world (real or in-game) doesnt revolve around you and being conveinent for you. You're making supertouch's point. This entitled gamer mentality the WoW created has to end somewhere...

Deisun_sl said:

I don't know if you need a dungeon finder or not. You can attract people to dungeons very easily by offering mobs inside the entrance that are difficult but solo-able, offer decent exp and an extremely rare chance to drop something like a runebranded girdle in Sebilis. Actually, Sebilis did it decently by offering solo-able mobs, decent space to kill them, sometimes you needed a buddy to split them with, and it was an area where groups formed quite often as a result. Granted, some classes couldn't solo there very well and I don't remember if those particular frogs could drop a runebranded girdle. It wasn't perfect by any means and it could have been a lot better but the point is if you give incentives for people to be in an area together, they will be there and they WILL group eventually.

You shouldn't need a max person group for everything imho.

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No, you don't need Dungeon Finder. UO didn't need Dungeon Finder, AC didn't need Dungeon Finder and DAoC didn't need Dungeon Finder and EQ didn't need Dungeon Finder. Dungeon finder is just a means to fast track people to max level. It all goes hand in hand with the fact that many of us old school MMO players don't want an MMO that only begins when you get to max level. We want an MMO where the real game begins and continues the moment you step into the world.

Flipmode_sl said:

Fast travel in a big, open, non-instanced world will only lead to one thing. 1-2 guilds with the highest playtime having every mob worth killing on lockdown. That is reason enough alone to slow down travel and make it meaningful. I dont care how good your game is, if the average gamer is prevented from progressing their goals by another player or guild for too long, they will leave your game. The solution of making people choose their target seems like a simple one to me.

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True, but only if the devs don't take those factors into account.

My preference is to have some fast travel in core areas, with slow travel to outlying zones. Spread raid/group/resources out so that you have to chose. The quick travel mob with good loot, or the long travel mob with great loot.

And by adding long lockout timers to bosses with short spawn times, then most players have a chance at a mob without being able to monopolize it.

It is possible to have long travel and fast travel in the same game. Along with safe vs danger and hard vs easy play. Most mmos just make everything fast, easy and safe. That is the problem. Instead, devs should mix it up a bit.

you don't like frustrations in a game? what about dying? dying repeatedly and then overcoming an obstacle triggers reward centers in the brain. strip every game of features that annoy you and you have a boring industry.

Blackyce_sl said:

No, you don't need Dungeon Finder. UO didn't need Dungeon Finder, AC didn't need Dungeon Finder and DAoC didn't need Dungeon Finder and EQ didn't need Dungeon Finder. Dungeon finder is just a means to fast track people to max level. It all goes hand in hand with the fact that many of us old school MMO players don't want an MMO that only begins when you get to max level. We want an MMO where the real game begins and continues the moment you step into the world.

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Any game that has tons of instanced dungeons has to have a LFD tool. It's not really an mmo at that point anyways, so they might as well go all the way to crapkingdom (I hate instanced dungeon lobby games).

If the game is open world, open dungeon then just some basic LFG tools are needed.

Flipmode_sl said:

Maybe because modern games have you spoiled thinking its all about you? Sometimes, you have to look up and realize that the world (real or in-game) doesnt revolve around you and being conveinent for you. You're making supertouch's point. This entitled gamer mentality the WoW created has to end somewhere...

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This is like...wait, what? I don't even...this is more of an entitled gamer mentality than anything I've said. Someone doesn't agree with you so they're entitled? What am I entitled to? The finer things of an MMO? Fine, whatever.

The problem with annoyances and frustrating concepts is that they are only "rewarding" and "fun" the first few times you do them. Grim said earlier that his run at level 14 was super scary and fun, and I have shit tons of memories like that too. But when I outleveled it all, and still had to do similar runs to get anywhere, except now it was no challenge, it wasn't new, and it took just as long...where the hell is the fun in that? And frankly, how much of nostalgia like Grim's is playing a part in what people want from EQN? "I remember running through kithicor forest with the SoW icon flashing, about to drop off, hearing the rattle of zombies in the forest while I desperately skirted the wall to find the Highkeep entrance."

Let's be honest here; this is a small handful of people who want concepts that most people have outgrown, just like they've outgrown training wheels on their huffy. If anyone has an entitled gamer mentality, it's possibly these guys, who think that they are the sophisticated people who can appreciate the most banal of MMO concepts that the rest of us find too "daunting" to subscribe to.

There's nothing wrong with LIKING it, but I personally don't get it, and I think there are specific things from people's memories influencing what they think they want.

On top of that, if the petitions are successful, I think there will be few players, and considering some people in this thread want a community, where you rely on others for everything, well...you need to draw players to begin with, otherwise trying to find a port at 3 am on a weekday is going to be the least of your problems.

You have to be realistic and flexible in what you hope to get. So many others have said it best; options, new spins, and the integration of old concepts vs new.

Yeah, I loved that run. But I never really had to do it again. Even in EQ as you leveled, travel mostly got easier. It wasn't until the world was just too big, and players too spread out, that they had to add the PoK books.

What EQ could have done though is provide more tools for fast travel. More OT hammers and the like. I really liked questing for obscure gate tools. And they were very handy as a tank.

LadyVex_sl said:

This is like...wait, what? I don't even...this is more of an entitled gamer mentality than anything I've said. Someone doesn't agree with you so they're entitled? What am I entitled to? The finer things of an MMO? Fine, whatever.

The problem with annoyances and frustrating concepts is that they are only "rewarding" and "fun" the first few times you do them. Grim said earlier that his run at level 14 was super scary and fun, and I have shit tons of memories like that too. But when I outleveled it all, and still had to do similar runs to get anywhere, except now it was no challenge, it wasn't new, and it took just as long...where the hell is the fun in that? And frankly, how much of nostalgia like Grim's is playing a part in what people want from EQN? "I remember running through kithicor forest with the SoW icon flashing, about to drop off, hearing the rattle of zombies in the forest while I desperately skirted the wall to find the Highkeep entrance."

Let's be honest here; this is a small handful of people who want concepts that most people have outgrown, just like they've outgrown training wheels on their huffy. If anyone has an entitled gamer mentality, it's possibly these guys, who think that they are the sophisticated people who can appreciate the most banal of MMO concepts that the rest of us find too "daunting" to subscribe to.

There's nothing wrong with LIKING it, but I personally don't get it, and I think there are specific things from people's memories influencing what they think they want.

On top of that, if the petitions are successful, I think there will be few players, and considering some people in this thread want a community, where you rely on others for everything, well...you need to draw players to begin with, otherwise trying to find a port at 3 am on a weekday is going to be the least of your problems.

You have to be realistic and flexible in what you hope to get. So many others have said it best; options, new spins, and the integration of old concepts vs new.

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you think everything should be fun and rewarding and that's precisely your problem.

did you even play eq? you act as though players were forced to run through outleveled zones on a regular basis. and if someone had to spend 30 seconds running through a level 30 zone to get to a level 60 zone, who cares?

supertouch_sl said:

you think everything should be fun and rewarding and that's precisely your problem.

did you even play eq? you act as though players were forced to run through outleveled zones on a regular basis. and if someone had to spend 30 seconds running through a level 30 zone to get to a level 60 zone, who cares?

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You WERE forced to run through outleveled zones on a regular basis; did you farm at all for the VT shards? I remember getting a portal and running to Sebilis; running to Velketor's Lab, running to EVERY MOTHERFUCKING ZONE IN LUCLIN BECAUSE THOSE ASSHOLES ALL DROPPED SHIT FOR KEYS. Did you ever do the run for the thought burrower? The zone around you didn't suck so much, but you could fall so fucking easily, and if you were in a position to have a monopoly on the spawns, you did this run *a lot*.

Then came PoP, with portals, making some runs slightly shorter. Then lost dungeons, so now we are running through the most outleveled of all zones, where everything could be instantly assassinated by my god damn rogue.

GoD, Omens? Easier travel, except the corpse runs and runs in general were hell. I auto followed a ranger in our guild I think every time we raided.

This is what I mean - I think what you remember is skewed to all get out. You remember the good things, the exploration at low levels, the surprises that ripped your face off...and you forget that after the 12th time that banshee jumped your ass, it ceased to be surprising and fun and started to become boring and bothersome.

And yea, I think everything should be fun in a game. When you describe what you want, you're describing a JOB. "It shouldn't be fun and rewarding." If something's not fun, it needs to be rewarding. If it's not rewarding, it needs to be fun.

This should be a gaming mantra.

Edit: Also wanted to add, I think we're blurring the lines of the concept of risk vs. reward here. The ideas that I rail against are not hard, they are boring. If the risk I need to take is one from being bored or falling asleep to progress, it's not my cup of tea.

Agraza_sl said:

They should also eschew the internet and encourage their players to meet up and play the paper and dice version of the game with their neighbors. Because when I think multiplayer I think of neglecting methods to get people together often.

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Whoa, you completely cut my sentence in half... I said they need to avoid adding the insta port feature of these tools. The tools are great but, when you form the group, you shouldn't be ported to x dungeon or zone. I love the tools, just not the aspect of adding travel to those tools. (I should have worded my original statement a bit better.)

LadyVex_sl said:

Yea, being handily beaten with a plethora of words in 3, 2, 1...

(Also you're still a hipster Lithose.

)

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Attachment 14086

Draegan_sl said:

Travel is boring no matter what you do and no one likes doing it. The purpose for travel times is to create different local zones of activity like in EVE or to facilitate size and scope like in WOW (pre flying mounts). So the object is to make it the least pain in the ass as possible.

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As for instant travel ect (Just expounding on what you were saying, Draeg). UO felt like a really big place, but it also had one of the most convenient and exploitable instant travel systems around. As someone said earlier, it's about "internal consistency". In UO, you had land, resources, rare spawns, PKs and places you wanted to hunt PKs...In the end, even though you could go everywhere instantly, once you were there, you had to search around for what you wanted--it made the world feel big, because once you arrived, there was still a ton of land to see. It also helped that not every part of the world was designed to be useful BUT it COULD be useful to players--so it was always changing, which kept you re-exploring, despite being able to travel instantly.

I personally like EvE's system, if I were designing a game it would be more like that. Except I'd give ways to reduce travel times by charging big money, or through expensive resources. I'd want to equate long term travel with either time or money (because, well, time is money). A player doesn't always have time to put into a game, but it should feel like it was an effort to cross a great distance, you can simulate that feeling with other expenses. And as an added bonus, you can let player operated travel businesses undercut the NPC's (It would still be expensive, but less so). So as an example, I can get you through the blockade and to Alderaan, but it's going to cost you 17k. (Or in game terms, I really want to hurry to my group and do that dungeon, and I'll pay big for convenience right now.)

All in all, the most important thing is making sure travel is worked into your world. Instant travel can work....Slightly longer travel (Eve) can work as well. I kind of agree with you though, Draeg, I don't seeverylong times working--Unless you build the need for it into the world AND it's only done by player choice, and creates "conflict" or cooperation by doing it (Like a special set of resources that can only be carried on land, so is vulnerable to bandits ect)....In the end, making the world feel big doesn't have to require a ton of time, it just has to require some expense to the player to cross it OR there has to be a reason to go out into the land a lot--and that expense can be gold, or time and the time doesn't have to be massive, lets face it, ten minutes of travel in an MMO feels like completing the Oregon trail.

The only problems I see come up with travel is if you have the deadly crossing of instant, easy travel and large swaths of useless, uninteresting land (Like leveling zones). Then travel in your game is going to suck and you're making the world feel small, because most of it is useless background bullshit.

Your attachment sucks for me. =(

But your post is good. Did I + you on this board yet?

Im in the school Of thought - while CRs and long walks on the beach to get somewhere were annoying, they greatly enhance all the things you like about the game : that next level of caution during pulls and combat choices that makes the game what it is. The separation between a guy that consistently never fucks up, occasionally fucks up, and always fucks up also gets applied.

Decisions mean more, everything means more, the activities still suck, but alas, the sweet is not as sweet without the sour.

LadyVex_sl said:

You WERE forced to run through outleveled zones on a regular basis; did you farm at all for the VT shards? I remember getting a portal and running to Sebilis; running to Velketor's Lab, running to EVERY MOTHERFUCKING ZONE IN LUCLIN BECAUSE THOSE ASSHOLES ALL DROPPED SHIT FOR KEYS. Did you ever do the run for the thought burrower? The zone around you didn't suck so much, but you could fall so fucking easily, and if you were in a position to have a monopoly on the spawns, you did this run *a lot*.

Then came PoP, with portals, making some runs slightly shorter. Then lost dungeons, so now we are running through the most outleveled of all zones, where everything could be instantly assassinated by my god damn rogue.

GoD, Omens? Easier travel, except the corpse runs and runs in general were hell. I auto followed a ranger in our guild I think every time we raided.

This is what I mean - I think what you remember is skewed to all get out. You remember the good things, the exploration at low levels, the surprises that ripped your face off...and you forget that after the 12th time that banshee jumped your ass, it ceased to be surprising and fun and started to become boring and bothersome.

And yea, I think everything should be fun in a game. When you describe what you want, you're describing a JOB. "It shouldn't be fun and rewarding." If something's not fun, it needs to be rewarding. If it's not rewarding, it needs to be fun.

This should be a gaming mantra.

Edit: Also wanted to add, I think we're blurring the lines of the concept of risk vs. reward here. The ideas that I rail against are not hard, they are boring. If the risk I need to take is one from being bored or falling asleep to progress, it's not my cup of tea.

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Velious was the height of slow travel. Luclin run to VT could be kinda long but factor in that you had the option of owning a horse by then and it was much faster than velious. Plus luclin VT run had nothing on TOV runs, odds of dieing running to TOV were sky high, I don't think I ever died running to VT tho and I was a clothy. Also if you had a port luclin was really easy to get around, but in velious it could be a hike to lots of places even with a port.

I kinda liked luclins layout, stuff was much more interconnected like kunark had been where velious was so linear.

Creslin_sl said:

Velious was the height of slow travel. Luclin run to VT could be kinda long but factor in that you had the option of owning a horse by then and it was much faster than velious. Plus luclin VT run had nothing on TOV runs, odds of dieing running to TOV were sky high, I don't think I ever died running to VT tho and I was a clothy. Also if you had a port luclin was really easy to get around, but in velious it could be a hike to lots of places even with a port.

I kinda liked luclins layout, stuff was much more interconnected like kunark had been where velious was so linear.

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Oh no I definitely agree. Luclin travel for me, when I think of shitty, was taking a portal and then having to run into the cave systems to get to all the outdoor bosses. *That's* the part that sucked. Invisible bridges, long, pathing underground crap etc.

The NToV run was fucking terrible though - having to swim under that one area just to get to western wastes? to run to the temple sucked it.

Main point was that, if you raided a lot, you spent a lot of time running. And in Luclin I just felt I was going everywhere, because you needed to kill every outdoor boss to get components for the stupid key.

My cleric was svelte, that's all I'm going to say.

Lithose_sl said:

I personally like EvE's system, if I were designing a game it would be more like that. Except I'd give ways to reduce travel times by charging big money, or through expensive resources. I'd want to equate long term travel with either time or money (because, well, time is money). A player doesn't always have time to put into a game, but it should feel like it was an effort to cross a great distance, you can simulate that feeling with other expenses. And as an added bonus, you can let player operated travel businesses undercut the NPC's (It would still be expensive, but less so). So as an example, I can get you through the blockade and to Alderaan, but it's going to cost you 17k. (Or in game terms, I really want to hurry to my group and do that dungeon, and I'll pay big for convenience right now.)

All in all, the most important thing is making sure travel is worked into your world. Instant travel can work....Slightly longer travel (Eve) can work as well. I kind of agree with you though, Draeg, I don't seeverylong times working--Unless you build the need for it into the world AND it's only done by player choice, and creates "conflict" or cooperation by doing it (Like a special set of resources that can only be carried on land, so is vulnerable to bandits ect)....In the end, making the world feel big doesn't have to require a ton of time, it just has to require some expense to the player to cross it OR there has to be a reason to go out into the land a lot--and that expense can be gold, or time and the time doesn't have to be massive, lets face it, ten minutes of travel in an MMO feels like completing the Oregon trail.

The only problems I see come up with travel is if you have the deadly crossing of instant, easy travel and large swaths of useless, uninteresting land (Like leveling zones). Then travel in your game is going to suck and you're making the world feel small, because most of it is useless background bullshit.

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EVEs travel time is pretty much the longest I can imagine, even worse it is slightly sped up and made less dangerous by being at the keyboard and clicking a few times per minute, but there are few worthwhile sights or experiences during it (I prefered WoW taxi rides - fits the game world, has some nice views from time to time if you actually stay at the keyboard but it doesnt force you to). I didnt mind it because unlike your DIKU clones, you dont feel the need to jump across the galaxy twice per hour in EVE. It worked because you only traveled relatively few jumps usually, like 3 or 8, not 25 or 40. Travel can be longer if you can design your game and world to account for it AND untrain the player expectation of having the whole game world available at any time. I fear the latter part is actually the hard part. It would probably take a studio to draw a line in the sand and clearly state "no free teleports everywhere" and at the same time making a game good enough that doesnt have players say "screw this, I'm going home". The last round of MMOs already failed at the making a "good enough game" without such additional hurdles, so its gonna take a while I guess.

Travel to get to a location is frustrating. Travel with rewards could be exciting. Think about something like WoW. Flight paths were a decent idea at the time, but now people see them as a huge frustration and a waste of time because the world is known. What about a chance during the flight paths to have a random encounter spawn. Something that allows you to land the mount, for a quick quest or instant adventure. Something that a teleporter will not get to see. Even better if it ties into a group activity. If you are in a group you can summon everyone to that adventure, then they get warped back to their original location once done. Make them give scaling rewards to the player base so that even if in a low level zone you can get something for being there. (With scaling level mobs of course) Or steal the scaling player level idea of GW2. Along with the instanced Personal quest locations and expand on that to groups and instant adventures for people willing to travel. You could even do stuff with pvp hot spots too.

Adventure and excitement should also be a part of the world. Too many games nowadays are just giving the theme park experience. Rift had some amazing ideas but their implementation was spotty. But part of why I love the MMORPG gamespace is that so much could be done.

LadyVex_sl said:

This is like...wait, what? I don't even...this is more of an entitled gamer mentality than anything I've said. Someone doesn't agree with you so they're entitled? What am I entitled to? The finer things of an MMO? Fine, whatever.

The problem with annoyances and frustrating concepts is that they are only "rewarding" and "fun" the first few times you do them. Grim said earlier that his run at level 14 was super scary and fun, and I have shit tons of memories like that too. But when I outleveled it all, and still had to do similar runs to get anywhere, except now it was no challenge, it wasn't new, and it took just as long...where the hell is the fun in that? And frankly, how much of nostalgia like Grim's is playing a part in what people want from EQN? "I remember running through kithicor forest with the SoW icon flashing, about to drop off, hearing the rattle of zombies in the forest while I desperately skirted the wall to find the Highkeep entrance."

Let's be honest here; this is a small handful of people who want concepts that most people have outgrown, just like they've outgrown training wheels on their huffy. If anyone has an entitled gamer mentality, it's possibly these guys, who think that they are the sophisticated people who can appreciate the most banal of MMO concepts that the rest of us find too "daunting" to subscribe to.

There's nothing wrong with LIKING it, but I personally don't get it, and I think there are specific things from people's memories influencing what they think they want.

On top of that, if the petitions are successful, I think there will be few players, and considering some people in this thread want a community, where you rely on others for everything, well...you need to draw players to begin with, otherwise trying to find a port at 3 am on a weekday is going to be the least of your problems.

You have to be realistic and flexible in what you hope to get. So many others have said it best; options, new spins, and the integration of old concepts vs new.

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To be clear, I am not attacking you or calling you entitled. I am saying the mentality that the game needs to cater to you (in a general sense) is an entitlement mentality. I am not one of those that clamor for the older days. Like I've stated, I didn't even play EQ1 much. I dont find things like camping for 20 hours for a mob challenging. It can be fun with the right friends but definitely isn't a challenge. But you have to admit games like WoW took it to the opposite extreme. They get what they want when and where they want it and that makes for a very bland game. Its more like a lobby game at times than an MMO.

EQ2 started down that path too. Fast travel with the top guilds or 2 being able to monopolize all the content because travel was instant. I am hoping for some middle ground. I think the pace of leveling needs to slow WAY down and the travel should be slower as well. Thats not to say you cant get thru stuff faster as you gain levels, but you should never be able to warp continents in 3 seconds. Make your choice of targets mean something. The days of 1-2 guilds hogging all content needs to die. Devs obviously haven't been able to master mob lockout timers or truly random respawns timers. So the only choice is slow travel and distance between the mobs as I see it.

LadyVex_sl said:

Main point was that, if you raided a lot, you spent a lot of time running.

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And if you were a Mage that was part of the logistics and made the game fun.

Racing around setting up CoH chains was fun!!!